Wullie

Depends what you mean by “going rate” really, if you mean a rate that bears almost no relation to his ability or usefulness, and has been created purely by the bizarre marketing that envelops football, and more specifically the Premier League, then I agree. It’s the footballing equivalent of paying £3.50 for a box of 8 Nurofen when there’s a box of 16 Ibuprofen on the same shelf for 24p. Here we’ve got a player who has been pretty frustrating for large swathes of his Premier League career, who cost under £2m, generated a 1500%(?) profit and yet still feels like an on-field disappointment. Big fees being paid for Karel Poborsky and El Hadji Diouf off the back of an international tournament was understandable when it was more difficult to watch players from other countries. This bloke has played every week in our division for nearly four years and been ordinary at best so for a couple of decent runs for France to have increased his value to this point is almost the stuff of parody, where forcing a corner in a European Championship game against Iceland is worth £10m more than doing the same against the same players in a friendly. At no point was he “France’s best player” like, unless you mean a point for 6 seconds in a particular game when he had the ball. I’m still shaking my head at the fee, I think it’s a more staggering amount of money than Andy Carroll was sold for, even in this inflated market. Carroll was young, full of potential, and was in the middle of a frightening run of form stretching back over an entire year that, at the time, showed no signs of stopping. Sissoko is 27, and has been alright for us, sometimes good, more often not very good, and is unlikely to get much better. I say this as someone who has always defended Sissoko, he’s been one of our better players over the last three years based purely on how utterly pitiful we’ve been in that time period, and even in that context, there won’t be too many disappointed not to be watching him. I bear him no ill will, and certainly have no jubilation towards the fee, just a general sense of astonishment. The proof of the going rate will be how he does for Spurs, all I’ll say is that if we bought an unknown player for thirty million pounds and he turned out to be Moussa Sissoko, I’d want to chuck the whole thing in.

http://www.glory-glory.co.uk/community/threads/moussa-sissoko.8626/page-16 Spurs fans far from pleased in this thread started by Greg.

Everton absolutely leathering that panic button. Better than Kone/Niasse Niasse, sure, but I didn't realise how much West Ham fans hated Valencia until recently.

Everton absolutely leathering that panic button.

Yeah. A lot of disappointed hate filled morons in this thread are probably mortified, but we got as good deal as could be expected, and Spurs will have a very good player on their books. He is a good player, but he's rarely of any use when not playing on the counter attack. How often do Spurs do that?

That's a pretty daunting attacking force, full of pace and power if not finesse. Think they'll be a force this season. Looks good on paper but bar Lukaku it's a collection of the most inconsistent players in the English game. Koeman will do very well to have them performing week-in week-out. Why bar Lukaku? He was absolutely dire for the last three months of the season.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/31/premier-league-spain-la-liga-transfer-window-signings

Very surprised Sammy and Vuckic haven't been shipped out in this window. Both 24 years old and sat round doing fuck all.

SkyBet have Spurs as favourites fwiw.

???. They aren't like. We have had the better of it in every sense in the last 20 years. More champions league games. More European games. Biggest gates. Higher revenue. More top 4 finishes. More European quarter and semi finals. Better stadium. Miles better support. Two more relegations too.

Very good on the break when at home against a better side pushing players forward. The rest of the time, not so much.

Agreed. They should have signed him from Man City really.

Can't be that good if he plays for Rennes.

"If he's so good, why is he only playing for Nice?"

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/28/article-2269437-016ADBB30000044D-511_634x383.jpg

Some people genuinely seem to believe that footballers pretty much come out of the womb fully developed and if they're not good enough for the Premier League when they enter secondary school, they can forget it.

I'd be genuinely interested to know how many teenagers have broken 20 goals in the football league in recent seasons, suspect it's very few. He deserves a chance in this division. It was the making of Andy Carroll when he had previously looked pretty shite, including when he was on loan. Armstrong has no such record of failure, he's succeeded at every level he's had a decent shot at so far.

Went well.

Exactly that, just the old JPT but they've added these reserve sides for the clubs that wanted in. Typically the lower league clubs pick weaker sides for the early rounds of this competition anyway, so if that has happened tonight, we might basically have L1/2 reserves vs PL reserves but with the lower league sides being the bookies' favourites. I've just taken a selection of the PL sides to score (WBA 5/6 to score at Millwall).

Fancy there's some good prices on these reserve sides tonight, against what may well be reserve sides from the lower league clubs. They're all outsiders but the two that have kicked off are already winning.

YouTube his red cards against Sheff Wed and Bournemouth. He's a really nasty piece of work.

He's had two full seasons in the Championship since then and been shite.

Grim.